I am my own customer profile

Posted by Meg Bear on August 7, 2009

I was thinking on the drive in today about how lucky I am to know exactly what the users of our Talent products do each day.

I know what they do because I am one. Not just in the sense that we use our own software here at Oracle (which we do), but in the broader sense of the profile of the people we want to help with our solutions.

Talent applications are unique in that they are built/implemented to help organizations be strategic with their talent, but they are primarily used by individual employees and managers.

Luckily, I happen to be each of those. So I get to build a product that helps me.

And here is what I want.

As an employee I want to add value to my company in exchange for my paycheck. I don’t just want to do work, I want to do work that is meaningful to the company. I want to know what I should work on, how I can do it more effectively and I want to be rewarded if [when] I get it right.

As a manager, I want to help my people succeed. I want to help them have the tools and skills they need to do their best job. I want to help them grow, I want to focus their efforts on the most important problems and I want to reward them for their accomplishments.

I was reminded in my thinking about a session I attended at PBWC a few months back where Dev Patanik was telling about his book Wired to Care.

Wired to Care tells the story of how companies prosperwhen they stop worrying about their own problems and start caring about ordinary people.

I realized how fortunate I am to be working for a product that I care so much about. I care about it not only as something I’m paid to do, I care about it because getting it right is so important to me.